Azerbaijani official: April battles of 2016 disrupted plans of Armenians

Wed 13 Mar 201907:39 GMT | 11:39 Local Time

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The April battles of 2016 disrupted plans of the Armenians, Azerbaijani deputy executive secretary of the New Azerbaijan Party, chairman of the Azerbaijani Parliamentary Committee on Public Associations and Religious Organizations Siyavush Novruzov said, Trend reports.

On April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions and settlements of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire by the Armenian Armed Forces. As a result of the shelling of Azerbaijan’s settlements located along the line of contact, civilians were killed, including two children. Numerous public and private facilities, including civil infrastructure, were severely damaged as a result of the attack.

Azerbaijan responded with an armed offensive, which resulted in four days of fighting, as the country liberated several important strategic spots previously occupied by Armenian Armed Forces. As many as 30 tanks, up to 15 armored guns and fortifications belonging to the Armenians were destroyed, 320 Armenian soldiers were killed and more than 500 servicemen of the enemy were wounded during the clashes.

As a result of the successful counteroffensive, more than 2,000 hectares of territory were liberated from the Armenian occupation.

Novruzov noted that Armenians, delaying the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, thought that the younger generation in Azerbaijan, people born in families who became refugees and IDPs in the 1990s would forget about Karabakh and the occupied territories and their military spirit would fall.

“They hoped that by delaying the settlement of the problem, they would be able to solve it in their favor,” Novruzov added. “However, the April battles dispelled these hopes of the Armenians. The April battles of 2016 showed that the younger generation is as patriotic as previous generations.”

He said that the April battles nullified the propaganda carried out by Yerevan among the Armenians.

“The Armenian authorities sought to assure their population that there is no fighting spirit in Azerbaijan, its army is weak, the equipment is outdated, and so on,” he noted.

Novruzov added that in fact, the Azerbaijani army has major striking force thanks to the acquisition of modern weapons from Russia, Turkey, Belarus, Israel, Ukraine and other countries and the modernization of part of the weapons of the Soviet period.

“From the point of view of military supplies, the Azerbaijani army began to meet NATO standards,” he said. “All this was shown in the April battles. Azerbaijan, using only a small part of its military potential in the April battles, completely defeated the Armenian army.”

Novruzov added that Azerbaijan is conducting systematic work in exposing the Armenian lies. As a result, now the world doesn’t believe the lies of the Armenians, he said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.